Westworld is only days away from returning to the small screen for Season 2. Fans have been waiting more than a year for new episodes, and what has been released so far of the new material indicates that we're in for a wild ride and a whole new world or two. To promote the return of Westworld, British TV provider NOW TV used a super realistic robot to interact with people in a pub, and the result was... well, awkward. Take a look!
I'll be honest: if not for the eyes, I might have believed this robot was a real person at first. The robot--called Fred--was the product of 12 weeks of development, and the result was a creation that looked and behaved an awful lot like a person. Many of the people in the pub seemed mostly okay with Fred, and those that weren't employed the classic technique of "uncomfortable laughter to hide unease." Throw in the beer that seemed to be flowing freely, and the whole place was primed for some spooky robot/human interactions.
Some of the people in the pub seemed more curious than anything else, and one woman looked positively skeptical when Fred's commentary on the weather was inaccurate. He managed to turn the table and freak her out a bit when he started to malfunction. Somehow, seeing the shockingly realistic human robot begin to malfunction was almost creepier than watching him interact with the folks around him. Personally, my favorite part of the entire video was when Fred started asking pub patrons for their thoughts on "the impending humanoid robot invasion" and how humanoid robots are "more useful than humans."
Unsurprisingly, Fred didn't get anybody in the pub agreeing with him about robots being more useful than humans, probably because the patrons have seen a Terminator movie, Battlestar Galactica, or even Season 1 of Westworld and know not to take the possibility of sentient robots too casually. Sure, the robots on Westworld haven't staged a rebellion and taken over (yet), but who knows what could happen in Season 2?
We'll have to wait and see. The good news is that we finally don't have too much longer to wait. The supersized 70-minute premiere for Westworld Season 2 airs on HBO in the U.S. on Sunday, April 22 at 9 p.m. ET. Season 2 promises to deliver just as much complex story to get fans speculating as Season 1, and we can't count on too many genuine spoilers hitting the web. For more viewing options, take a gander at our midseason TV premiere guide and our summer TV premiere schedule. If you still need to watch Westworld Season 1 but don't want to pay for an HBO subscription, you're in luck.
